Wednesday, 23rd April by dex
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur - 18:50
Right, now that I've tried to sound like an intelligent bastard and failed miserably, time for the second issue. We understand self-improvements in the same update. They are cool. Two demos for the price of one, fine by me. But, you could at least consider restraining yourself from sending us your every successful try. When 3 demos on the same map and same category arrive in the space of an hour, it gets a bit annoying and boring to watch all those demos. Fortunately, the author of that happy spam in our mailbox has told me to only add the last demo from the submission spam. That throws away 6 demos from the update as well.
Even with those demos out for the count, the collection of demos is adequately sized - 16 demos you can download here. Most of them are made by the new "Demo machine", Rutger Baks.
The only episode single player demo is however a courtesy of someone else, namely Michael Hudson. Still going around improving stuff on Zerstörer , and still on the same old zer1m7 level. This time he improved the Easy Run by 10 seconds, to achieve a final time of 2:20. It's a self improvement, and it's definitely a nice record. We want more!
tcentral, the relatively fresh map, is still receiving a few demos from time to time. The guy to tackle the Easy Run by Jaakko Alakopsa is Laurent Mertens. The improvement totals exactly 1 second, for a final time of 1:38. The other map Laurent took in his crosshairs was xnq1002. The hole he filled was Easy 100%, the time is 3:56. He also sent in an NH, but unfortunately that couldn't be added to the archive.
And why is that? Well, it was submitted after Jaakko Alakopsa sent in his own, faster runthrough. The time for this one is 4:20, a very nice demo indeed. Not far from the EH, either.
Jaakko has also made a demo on the lovely chain3 map. It's a self improvement of 28 seconds, which gives us a time equal to 25 seconds. The text file may confuse you, but I assure you: Jaakko in fact does NOT see demos where there are none (even though he is probably mentally ill in other respects ;)). The demo he has beaten was simply recorded with the wrong stats, so that's why it's out of the update.
And now, for the part by the new 'demo machine', also known as Rutger Baks. All of the demos left in this update are fully or partially his work. You've gotta hand it to him, that's quite a lot of demo stuff :). Since I'm a lazy bum, I won't go into details of all the demos from this awesome flood.
To finish it up, 2 coops (both with Rutger Baks in, duh). In the first one, he got Jaakko Alakopsa to join the fun. They picked d7 as the theatre of their Quake warfare. The 2-Player Easy 100% in 1:32 thus conceived is a tablefiller, with the Single Player time set at 1:58. Those two then got Paul Davies into the mix, changed the map to heresp1 and went to a more forgiving Easy skill. The 3-player Easy Run previously held by Pif, Luc and Andre de Mestre was done 2 seconds faster, finishing in 5 seconds. Quite fast :).
That's all, I guess. As you can see, the new maps are relatively untouched, so we're waiting and craving for new demos. Till next time!
Tuesday, 22nd April by Aspokala
Mo-mo-mo-more maps! - 11:11
Monday, 14th April by Aspokala & friends
Man in fire - 16:35
Nightmare Run in 12:58 by Jaakko, tablefiller.
Aspokala: Good enough as a tablefiller.
dex: Higher difficulty seems to be of no hinderance to Jaakko whatsoever.
mwh: wow, didn't expect to see this hole filled, certainly not by such a good demo
Nightmare Run in 0:25 by Rutger, beating Arturo Garcia Lasca by 1 second.
Aspokala: Even better than the ER although slightly slower.
dex: Same as above, with additional monsters for a nice, spicy taste!
mwh: i suspect a lot of dying went into making this record
Tuesday, 1st April by dex
These aren't the updates you're looking for - 18:06
How about this, then? iD SP demo! That's right! No joke, the map and category that received an improvement is Azure Agony, Nightmare 100%. Is that enough to convince you we're rolling like usual, or even better? No? The improvement total is 33 seconds. But wait, there's even more to it! The mysterious submitter is none other than...
*drumroll*
Thomas Stubgaard! I'm sure most of you don't believe me, and consider this just an awful prank. Well, 2 minutes and 43 seconds of butter smooth monster killing should be enough to prove you wrong. I missed this incredible smoothness, I really have. Here's hoping the glorious return is not just a one time occurence, since I'm eager to see more. The mad Dane still hasn't lost his edge. Oh yeah, it's the first iD SP of the year.
With this update's kicker behind us, time to take care of other demos, starting with Michael Hudson's influence on the Zerstörer episode. As Aspokala said in the last update, it's the weirdest episode we have on SDA, so it is no surprise it's also my favourite ;). Michael continued playing zer1m7, although he changed the categories he decided to improve. He tackled the Easy 100% first, previously held by Nolan Pflug. Without even watching the earlier record, he got a 6 second improvement (6:46). Then, he decided to stop it from sucking, watched the previous demo, made a few changes to the route and finished the running with a further 1 minute, 1 second improvement, for a final time of 5:45. Between those two, he also improved the Nightmare 100% record. It was previously in the hands of Nolan as well, and it got an improvement of 20 seconds (7:28). Then, Michael applied the magic from EH and improved it yet again, this time only by 36 seconds, which gives us the final time of 6:52. With those records, Michael earns his third Total Ownage. Really good work!
Not the end of the episode stuff, by any chance. The next episode tackled was jzblue, and the person to tackle it was our gibberish master Basil de Vries. He started with a neat marathon, Nightmare 100% one, specifically. He finished in 1:51, half a minute faster than Marlo Galinski. But, since he equalised a record on jzblue_1 during the marathon, he decided to improve the Nightmare 100% there next. He started with a shameless improvement of one second over Flavio Quadros (0:33). Then, a few days later he picked up the map again and got further three seconds of improvement, making the final time 0:30. Pretty nice. It's interesting that Orbs surpassed himself on the amount of mistakes with submission [2 empty e-mails; then an e-mail with both the marathon and the 0:33; then an e-mail which claimed a 0:32 demo was attached, and finally the 0:30], but by now it'd be more worthy of noting if he actually submitted everything right ;).
To top off the singleplayer portion of the update, we have a few non-episode demos. Rutger Baks still doesn't give pcgwhse a rest: Easy 100% gets a 6 second self improvement to yield 1:32, and Nightmare 100% is a retaking of the record from the hands of Richard Skidmore. The time is 1:49, 10 seconds faster. Another TO in this update, nicely done!
The last singleplayer demo is a work by Rickard Axelsson, on the recently added map known as tigcat02. The previous Nightmare Run by Laurent Mertens wasn't quite what Rickard liked, so he improved it by no more and no less than 7 seconds. 0:33 is quite a bit better.
Coops! There's quite a few, and they don't stop on 2 players, either. We also have a few iD demos hidden within, so let's get to it!
2-player Easy 100% on The Pain Maze first. It's a result of a cooperation between Jaakko Alakopsa and Basil de Vries. Thanks to a nice route change, they manage to squeeze 15 seconds out of the earlier record, held by Thomas Stubgaard and Mads-Peter Stubgaard. The time they ended with is 1:08. Very nicely done!
The rest of 2-player demos gets here thanks to Basil de Vries and Rutger Baks. Together, they have first did two very short runs on dmc1m4. Short, really short. Both the 2-player Easy Run and the 2-player Nightmare Run are 3 seconds. Both are also cheap way, and both are a 1 second improvement over de Mestres. The next map they took as the target of their happy endeavours was czg03. Here, they made a tablefiller in the 2-player Easy 100% with 2:59 on the clock (sp time 4:11).
Another map they improved a demo on was tcentral. The previous 2-player Easy Run by Pif and Luc de Mestre was done 5 seconds faster by the typo-team. 1:04 it is. Then they decided that 2 players is a bit too little for nice running, and they decided to bring Jaakko Alakopsa aboard. This team continued hammering tcentral - 3-player Easy Run got a tablefiller which lasts 53 seconds. The 2-player time was printed in this paragraph already, but in case you've got a brain like a sieve, it's 1:04. The 3-player Easy 100% also received a tablefiller - 1:19. The 2-player time for this one is 1:58.
And finally, as an icing on the "April Fool's Update cake" of SDA, there's an iD madcoop by Jaakko Alakopsa, Paul Davies and Basil de Vries. The Underearth 3-player Nightmare 100% by those fellows was finished in mere 91 seconds (2-player time 1:51). Watch it, it's good.
Let's hope I didn't make an April Fool of myself and the update doesn't contain (too many) mistakes :). Till next time, and keep the awesomely high level of demos up!
Wednesday, 26th March by Aspokala
A little change - 13:22
Saturday, 22nd March by Aspokala
Ending of the Championship! - 21:25
Thursday, 6th March by Aspokala
Must learn to count - 23:43
We haven't seen a new single player demo on the weirdest Quake episode - Zerstörer since 2004. Michael Hudson was weird enough to try zer1m7 and managed to complete the Easy Run in 2:30, beating Nolan Pflug's very old record by 4 seconds. Then he abandoned the noob skill and selected the Nightmare Run which ended as 2:42, 2 seconds faster than Basil de Vries.
Another custom episode Nightmare Run came from Rutger Baks. He performed some beautiful rocketjumps in d5 and ate a lavaball for a supper. That burning feeling in his mouth speeded him to a 0:28, beating Jaakko Alakopsa by 1 second.
Then moving on to the newest maps. On dethtrap I got bored of staring the empty tables and recorded an Easy 100% tablefiller, finishing in 2:47.
Pcgwhse was once again the most popular map in the single player front. Rutger took responsibility of improving the Run times, first doing it on Easy in 0:59, beating the SDA grand daddy Richard Skidmore by 4 seconds. Half an hour later he managed to beat Morfans' Nightmare Run by 7 seconds to get a slick 0:58. Immediately after that he thought that the Easy Run can't be slower and ran it in 56 seconds, which is now looking good.
Richard Skidmore didn't let Rutger get the total ownage back such easily and recorded a Nightmare 100% in 1:59, beating the Dutchie by 16 seconds.
Laurent Mertens did not let the Nightmare Run of tcentral rot in the tables and improved himself by full 19 seconds to a 1:45.
Coops! All of them feature Rutger Baks.
At first he dragged me along to the corridors of desout. The demo was done while dex was writing the update last week so it didn't make it to that pack of demos. The time we got is 1:05, beating Carl Tholin and Johan Nilsson by 8 seconds. Our second demo was recorded on pcgwhse where we produced a tablefiller in 1:14 (single player time 1:38).
The second guy he paired with was Paul Davies. As their adventures in loupus1 weren't enough last week, they did an Easy 100% tablefiller in 0:36 thus equalling the ER2 time (single player time 0:42).
The last but not least team mate is Basil de Vries. The Dutchies travelled through tigcat02, being the proud players to record both Easy and Nightmare 100% tablefillers on that map, finishing in 0:37 and 0:44 (single player times 0:44 and 1:23).
The grenade counter bug which crashed the contest map has been fixed. If your route requires difficult grenadejumps, make sure to download the updated version of the map from the contest page.
Monday, 3rd March by NahkahiiR
Teddython begins - 16:57
Saturday, 1st March by dex
The Quake continues! - 15:05
In the aftermath of the conflict for demo 10000, the entire speedrunning world has been struck by a Quake of epic proportions. As a result, we have received an incredible number of demos from many. Is the relatively static state of SDA coming to an end? I sure as heck hope so. But, without further ado, this week's demos...
Paul Davies has disappeared from this world for quite a long time. Many wondered where his bad demos went, until finally he resurfaced a few days back. And he brought us rogue demos. Suffering from what I call 'the everlasting self-improvement' syndrome, he takes down r2m2's Easy Run by a further second to 0:56. Who knows, maybe it'll become a good record if he submits a few more.. ;) Joking aside, the demo is a very nice watch, and it's not the end of Lag.Com's influence in this update. It is the end of his single-player influence, though.
Another player unseen in a long time is closing in to his 10th anniversary of Quake speedrunning. In celebration, he has submitted a demo to us. And, by the powers, it's a good demo. Really. 104 seconds faster than Thomas Bergendorff speak for themselves. The not-so-mysterious submitter is Carl Tholin, and the demo he improves is the Nightmare 100% of czg03. 166 monsters are slaughtered and 7 secrets are found in 5 minutes and 54 seconds. I'd love to see him push through the barrier of 100 records (he has 97 now) before his anniversary truly kicks in.
Not the end of the glorious returns yet! The next player hasn't submitted any demos since June 2006, until finally caving in to the Quaking urge yesterday. Rickard Axelsson decided to improve the Easy 100% on hotel. He manages to do it one second faster than the previous holder Adam Lewandowski, finishing with 37 seconds displayed on the clock. Very nice return, and we want more! :).
The rest of the single player goodness in this update is devoted to two of the recently added maps. The first in line is pcgwhse. Most categories saw an improvement here: Richard Skidmore still hasn't forgotten about us and likes to surprise us with a demo or two every now and then. He used some magic to improve both Runs, which were previously held by Rutger Baks - the one on Easy is finished 3 seconds earlier, for a time of 1:03, and the more fitting skill 3 one is lowered by as much as 13 seconds for a total of 1:06. Great work!
Rutger Baks really got to work on the Easy 100%. He submitted two self-improvements: the first one is 7 seconds faster than his earlier endeavours (1:40), and another one pushes the time 2 seconds further, down to a nice 1:38. It is an entertaining watch!
And we finally get to the map that received the most submissions in the last days. The sheer number of demos on tcentral we found in our inbox can only be matched by the number of grenade launchers, rocket launchers and nailguns on that map. The Easy Run is an effort by Jaakko Alakopsa, a 13 second improvement over what Flavio Quadros managed to get earlier. The time is 1:39.
The rest of the SP demos on this map are from Laurent Mertens, who gets more and more active with each update. You should all follow his example and submit as many demos as you can. Here are his submissions:
And finally, coop time. There were quite a few, and it doesn't stop on just two players either.. but it's where it starts. Generally, there were two coop making teams in this update. The first one consisted of Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre. They did some justice to the blessed map that is gonna lead us into promised land, hellchepsout. They got the 2-player Easy 100% done in 1:28. The single player time is 2 minutes and two seconds. As you can see, the second player really helps a lot here.
Another records they have made are 100%'s on the popular tcentral map. The 2-Player Easy one gets tablefilling action in 1:58 (single player time 3:34), and the 2-Player Nightmare 100% is finished in 2:20 (single player time 4:04). I like how the players practically don't see each other for the duration of the demo, and yet everything clicks nicely. De Mestres have submitted one more coop, but unfortunately it had a mistake in a submission and didn't beat the earlier demo :(.
The most recent demo in this update is from Jaakko Alakopsa and Rutger Baks. 2-Player Easy 100% on xnq1002 didn't have to beat anything, since there's no single player and no coop demo they'd have to beat. Fortunately, they went for something better than a first success demo, and the result is this 2:31 tablefiller. I really like the part from NahkahiiR, and Rutger didn't play too shabby either. Nice work!
The first map to get a coop treatment from a part of the second team is loupus1. The submitters here are Paul Davies and Rutger Baks. They teamed up for a 2-player Easy Run tablefiller, in 0:36. The single player time is 0:40.
Then, Jaakko Alakopsa decided to tag along, and he was shamelessly chosen for hosting. This resulted in the first of the madcoops in today's update, d1 3-player run in 0:08. The single-player time is exactly 9 seconds, the small improvement comes from additional boosts.
And finally, we get to the last demo, which could be considered something of a moment to be recorded in modern history. Not only it is the first 4-player madcoop in almost 15 months, but it also is the first coop in which I have had reasonable ping (!) and managed to take some significant part. The team consisting of NahkahiiR, Rutger, me and Lag.Com decided to do a 4-player Easy 100% on d1. We finished the level in 20 seconds, thanks to abusing quite a bit of luck based things. We even dared to have me execute an intermission kill, a worthwhile sight in any madcoop. Let's hope the number of players will still grow rapidly :P
That was quite a lengthy update, aye? See you all next time I happen to be doing the update. And I hope that moment will come fast, so submit demos! There still are a bunch of holes to fill...
Saturday, 23rd February by NahkahiiR
More than a myriad of demos - 12:15
10000 DEMOS!
Who would have believed that in the beginning? Anyway, more demos keep coming and only God knows how many there will be in the end. Now sit comfortably, prepare some drinks and snacks to watch all 21 demos of this update.
It's nice to see a rogue demo once in a while. Paul Davies continues improving his Easy Run of r2m2 with a nice 0:57, 2 seconds faster than himself. I don't understand how anyone can speedrun this level (I have never completed it) but it seems to be possible.
The rest of single player demos were done on recently added maps:
That was all about single player demos. First coops of the year are offered to us by the famous de Mestre clan. The tablefilling Run performance by Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre started in sm28 as a 0:44 on both skills, Easy and Nightmare. At this point Raymond de Mestre joined the funny action to record some 0:27's again on Easy and Nightmare skills. Nice boosting all around. :)
Tcentral turns out to be well balanced for coops. Pif and Luc recorded an entertaining Easy Run through the weird teleporter complex in 1:09 and then switched to the Nightmare skill to get a 1:11, both tablefillers.
The number of demos in the last contest rose to 25. Check out the final results from here. Sorry for updating this late, you can blame me. :)
Wednesday, 13th February by NahkahiiR
Contest results - 21:36
Congratulations to the winners:
After all the confusion, go view the results.
Friday, 1st February by dex (2nd update)
Oops - 15:00
Friday, 1st February by dex
Confusement is the spice of life - 2:02
Finally, we have experienced a nice influx of demos to the inbox. I hope you get cracking on the new maps even further, and even though there's a contest underway right now. We're very, very close to the 10000 demo barrier - YOU might be the one to get the magic number. So get running to win that milestone and an assortment of awards of your choice...actually, just the milestone. What's the count now? 9997. That's three demos needed to get to the magic 10000 barrier for those of you that forgot how to count. But, without further ado...the new demos!
As I said, you got to work on the new maps, although there are still several tablefillers to be had. Let's start with my personal favourite, hellchepsout! The only run on this gem of a map is an effort by Flavio Quadros, who gets quite a portion of this update. The run in question is the old fashioned Easy Run, done in 0:45, a tablefiller. Who will bless this incredible map with more demos upstanding to said maps' insane quality?
One map that got quite a treatment was dethtrap. The Easy Run saw the comeback of Rutger Baks with a 0:15. Then, it got improved to a nicer 0:12 by Flavio (told you he has quite a part in this update). I was thinking about labelling it optimal, but I have to check it up yet, and I think 11 is achievable, albeit very hard to get. In any case, the other demo on this map is again by Rutger, who decided to change the skill to number 3 and do a Nightmare Run in 15 seconds.
There's also the need to note that after Rutger was done with his ER 0:15, we have received an 0:15 from a somewhat anonymous runner going by the nickname zzzKOTzzz. Of course, we can't add it to the list of demos, but it would be unfair to not mention the runner in the update just because he was late with his submission. Here you will find his demo. It's also included in the big dzip under the name 'dethtrap_015.dz'. Too bad you were a little late, mate, hope you get better luck next time. We await your submissions with open arms :).
With dethtrap behind us, let's move to the most popular new map in the last days: loupus1. This one got an almost unhealthy number of demos, and as if that weren't enough, most of them didn't include a textfile, and they weren't even dzipped. I had to improvise text-files out of the demos myself and manage to avoid being utterly confused by the sheer number of so closely named demos :). And here they are:
Other maps weren't nearly as popular. The small but sweet tigcat02 map has seen two tablefilling submissions by Flavio Quadros. The first one is a 0:27 Easy Run with a nice boost at the end. The second one is a bit of monster killing during the 44 seconds this Easy 100% lasts.
The longest map in the entire update, xnq1002, wasn't exactly the one with the biggest income of demos. In fact, the only one, by Flavio Quadros again, is an Easy Run in 2:39. There's quite a lot of room to bunny there, I liked the demo.
Finally, the last demo on a brand new map is a tcentral demo by... you guessed it, Flavio Quadros. And again, you guessed it, it's an Easy Run. The time for it is 1:52. The movement is quite slick in this demo. Also the map seems like a wallhug heaven.
That's all for your endeavors for new maps. But, there's still quite a few demos on the older maps. So, let's get going... the good old terra2 gets a nice treatment from our very own Jaakko Alakopsa. And boy, it's a great treatment indeed. With a very nice trick, Jaakko accomplishes an Easy Run in 0:29, 7 seconds faster than Mathias Thore himself! That's quite a demo. But NahkahiiR also did a Nightmare Run in the same time, forcing me to realise that he indeed stopped making moderate quality demos in limited amounts of time with a regularity of a machine gun and started owning instead. Nice work!
The Master of Mistakes, also known as Richard Skidmore, has yet again surprised me with an entertaining demo. It's black1 Nightmare 100%, this time in 3:44, 11 seconds faster than himself. Now get it even lower. :P
And lastly, Flavio Quadros has improved the quite recent sm26_necros2 Nightmare 100% by Pif de Mestre, by no more and no less than 29 seconds. The new time is 0:55, which is a pretty nice demo with quite a few good ideas.
And that's it for tonight, ladies and gentlemen. And remember: there's no glory in store for demo number 10001...
Tuesday, 29th January by NahkahiiR
Updatus Surprisus - 20:30
Wednesday, 23rd January by NahkahiiR
Rock and roll - 20:35
I can't wait to see new tablefillers, let the party begin. :)
Friday, 18th January by dex & NahkahiiR
Coop-update without coops - 00:42
Our hunger for new demos increases as the milepost of 10000 demos approaches.